


Treasure Pieces

by elephant_eyelash



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M, Future Fic, Suicidal Thoughts, kind of fluffy if you squint hard enough
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-29
Updated: 2013-12-29
Packaged: 2018-01-06 16:24:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1108990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elephant_eyelash/pseuds/elephant_eyelash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arya, Gendry, and the problems that arise after a happy ending. Originally written as a giftfic on tumblr.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Treasure Pieces

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rainfallen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rainfallen/gifts).



“It’s like…you’re empty, and I think I can fill you up, ‘cos I love you so much.” He switched his feet. “But then you look at me and there’s nothing in your eyes, and sometimes I think I’d rather have you hate me than have you look at me all empty.”

The words were rehearsed, forced, painful. But she couldn’t pretend she didn’t know they were coming, hadn’t felt them already in the gaps between them.

There was the scent of autumn bonfires in the air. They formed small dots of light in her eyes that danced. She exhaled through her nose, folded her arms, and began to study the skyline.

But he grabbed her face, forced her to look at him.

“Tell me what you’re thinking.” He said. The lights ebbed. In the distance the spines of the dry leaves cracked in the heat. Her lips parted for a moment, as if she was going to speak, before they shut again. He ran his thumb along her jawline. She closed her eyes at the feel of it.

“What do you want to hear?” She asked. “I’m here. I’m your wife. I’m the mother of your son. I don’t know what more you want from me.”

She turned her back and watched the lake that slept beside them. In the distance the window of the nursery glowed orange, hummed. She waited for something to stir in her breast, but there was no response, just an absence.

She tried to imagine how the water would taste. It would taste of release, she thought. It’d fill her up. She would touch the shadows at the bottom where they said bad spirits dwelled, and they would welcome her as one of their own.

“I don’t even care if you don’t love me, you know?” He said, and she could feel the jagged, desperate edges to the words. She was sure he was close to crying, but was afraid to look. “I just want you to let me know you, proper, full.”

She grabbed his hands, forced them to enclose her own. “Feel these hands?” She said, with a voice that felt like it was coming outside of her body. “These hands that hold your son? These hands once killed a man for a pair of boots.” She brought his fingers to her lips with a jerk. “These lips you kiss? They’ve told lies, countless ones. To innocent people. They’ve said dark words that I can still hear at night no matter how hard I try and shut them out.”

She shoved him away from her, turned back away to the lake, to the comforts it held. The night settled in around them. The sky threatened rain.

“Is that knowing me ‘proper’ enough for you?” She said. Her profile gleamed white in the fading light.

She wanted to cry, because she felt as if she already knew the answer. When they were together sometimes she could see it in his eyes and feel it in his hands— his desire to know her, to consume every bit of her— and it would make her fade away from him. Faced with all of who she was she ran, always.

Gendry didn’t run.

The fires were burning low now. The leaves had turned to ash. It left a bitter, clean taste in the air. Arya shut her eyes and listened, but all that came were his footsteps behind her, and then the soft sound of fabric against skin as he brought his arms around her shoulders.

“You’re shaking.” He whispered, after a while.

“It’s cold.” She answered. A silence came between them, then, “there’s more.”

“I know.” The words came out heavy, dense.

“I don’t know if I can ever tell it all.” She said. He took a deep breath and buried himself in the slope of her neck. She smelt of their son, of leaf-smoke, of her. He drank it all.

“I’ll take what you give me.” He mumbled. She wondered if he meant that.

He brought his hand to take hers’, brushing his thumb over her knuckles as he spoke. “These are good hands. They do good things now.”

She took her hand away and fanned her fingers for inspection against the dark blue of the water. She thought of the soft flesh of her son and the weight of the blade and how deftly she carried both within these hands. The muscles in her arm began to ache, until it felt like it was removed from her body entirely, a weapon she wielded independent of herself.

He brought her arm down gently, slowly to her side. She began to breathe.

In the nights and days and years that followed she would leave him fragments, clues. In the fits of her nightmares as she clung to his chest in between the painful sensation of breathing and she would tell him her stories. In the still air of the Godswood she would recall the face of her mother to him through a chance play of light on the leaves. As she kissed him she would sometimes murmur Braavosi words that poured into his skin but words which she would never tell him the meanings of, the secrets within (“I love you, stupid”).

And on peaceful nights they would stand by the lake together, silent, and let their secrets stand still in the air, turning to ash. 


End file.
